Sticky Rice Cakes for TteokBokkI & TteokGuk

떡볶이떡 & 떡국떡, TteokBokkITteok & TteokGukTteok

Today, I will show you how to make an ingredient for Korean cooking – sticky rice cakes. They are commonly used for tteokbokki, tteokggochi, and tteokguk. Koreans take their rice to a shop and let them make it. It is an interesting process, which is detailed in this awesome blog post by the Stumbling Engineer. Outside of Korea, many people cannot find these sticky rice cakes where they live, so they want to make tteokbokki and tteokguk at home. With this recipe, you can make sticky rice cakes at home and enjoy tteokbokki and tteokguk.

Short Korean Lesson

Video Instructions

Main Ingredients

Directions

For the steaming process, filled almost half of a pan with water and boil it on high.

Meanwhile, combine 3 cups of rice flour and 1 tsp of salt.

Slowly add 1½ cups of water, stirring it gently.

The rice flour will be crumbly.

Prepare a wet cheesecloth. Place the cheesecloth in a steamer.

Add the rice flour on top of the cheesecloth.

Once the water starts to boil, steam the rice flour for about 20 minutes on high.

In a bowl, add 1½ cups of cold water and 1 tsp of sesame oil. If you don’t like sesame oil, you can use normal cooking oil instead.

After 20 minutes, the rice flour will be cooked.

Wear cotton gloves before placing the plastic gloves over your hands. This will help prevent your hands from becoming burnt. The dough will be hot!

Use a bread machine to knead the dough. I used the pizza dough setting for 25 minutes. It is very important to knead the dough thoroughly for the gluten to fully develop and become sticky, so I do not recommend taking any shortcuts with this step. =P

If you don’t have a bread machine, you can make the sticky rice cakes with 1½ cups of rice flour and 1½ cups of sweet rice flour instead of 3 cups of rice flour. Hand knead the dough for at about 10 minutes. Rice cakes made this way will be inferior to using a machine; hand kneading does not make a good texture for the rice cakes.

When you handle the dough, cover your hands and the board with a little oil and water so that the dough will not stick to things. Take some of the dough and round it. Roll it on a board with your hands until it becomes about half an inch in diameter.

For tteokbokki or tteokggochi, cut it into 2 inch pieces.

For tteokguk tteok, roll the dough into a 1-inch diameter, and leave it at room temperature for one day before you cut it.

If you put some water on your knife, it makes it easier to cut. After waiting one day, slice it diagonally into ¼-inch pieces.

hi Maria,
Yes, you can. Just I want you to know that the rice cakes are very very sticky and it is difficult to clean later when it’s stick to the attachment and the bowl. You might want to soak them in water to wash later.

Thank you so much omg I’ve been trying and failing for so long ur recipe finally did it.

Tip for those using dry flour: make sire u add 1/2 cup water per 1 cup of flour. The texture I had once I finished mixing the two was like wet clay. It would stick to my hand bit after steaming I got the exact texture of tteok.

Hi Aeri
I was wondering what they were I am going to try making those Rice rolls
I am trying a lot of Korean cooking, and I find the food delicious
I’m not too keen on it being too hot so I just cut down on the chilli
thank you
Ammiel

hi Rodica,
I’m sorry that I can not tell what will be best for your cofee grinder… I guess it will be better to use just dried rice as your coffee beans are dry ?? I’m thinking to come up with a different method to make this tteok since some people have problem to get right result for this recipe.. thanks

Yes, you can use the coffee grinder. Rice flour (ssalgaru) is flour made from finely milled rice. Koreans usually use one of two kinds of ssalgaru for making rice cakes: chapssalgaru (sweet rice flour) and maepssalgaru. Maepssalgaru is made with short grain rice and usually sold frozen to keep it moist. Maepssalgaru is a wet flour and kept frozen.

How to make your own “Short grain rice flour Mepssalgaru 멥쌀가루”https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/mepssalgaru Shows you a video and written recipe for making your own wet Short grain Rice Flour for Tteokbokki and TTeokguk.

hi Shannel,
For the right result, you need short grain rice for this.. when you say.. pretty sticky .. I don’t know how much the rice you mentioned same with the short grain rice.. You can always try it and find out.. but it really needs right kind of rice to get chewy texture and good flavor..thanks

hi Samantha Tabel,
I just replied your same question on youtube.. lol I can see you really want to try this recipe for yourself. I hope you get success. Please make sure that you use right kind of flour.. that will be Korean sticky rice flour (short grain rice flour).. thanks 😉

hi Debbie,
I don’t know what supermarket you are talking about. If you go to a Korean grocery store, they will have short grain rice flour and sweet rice flour.. for this recipe.. You need short grain rice flour. thanks 🙂

hi hana,
Yes, I used rice flour from a store too.. just make sure that you use right kind of rice flour.. it is short grain rice flour.. it will be safe to buy right kind if you get it in a Korean grocery store. It is not sweet rice flour.. or long grain rice flour.. thanks

Hi Aeri, I saw these in the Korean shops and asked the lady how to eat it and she said you just eat it plain like that. So I bought it and we opened the package and ate it like that. I’m sure there’s more to it than this. I also bought seasoned seaweed so we wrapped the rice cakes in the seaweed. LOL. My question is, what do you eat with these rice cakes?

Hi! I’m Aeri Lee. Welcome to my website where I show you how to make delicious Korean food along with teaching a little Korean, sharing family moments with you, and other things. Read more about me and this website here.